Hide the Pain Harold is an

Internet meme An Internet meme, or meme (, Help:Pronunciation respelling key, ''MEEM''), is a cultural item (such as an idea, behavior, or style) that spreads across the Internet, primarily through Social media, social media platforms. Internet memes manif ...

based on a series of stock photos of András István Arató (; born 11 July 1945), a Hungarian retired

electrical engineer Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems that use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

and

model A model is an informative representation of an object, person, or system. The term originally denoted the plans of a building in late 16th-century English, and derived via French and Italian ultimately from Latin , . Models can be divided in ...

. In 2011, he became the subject of the meme due to his overall

facial expression Facial expression is the motion and positioning of the muscles beneath the skin of the face. These movements convey the emotional state of an individual to observers and are a form of nonverbal communication. They are a primary means of conveying ...

and seemingly fake smile. Arató has been in and out of the stock photo and advertisement industry as a model since disclosing his identity. He took up travelling to Turkey and Russia for recreational purposes and kept a blog about his life and travels. The photos associated with such travels are said to be the cause of Arató's fame. While vacationing in Turkey, Arató decided to upload personal vacation photos onto social media site iWiW, which were noticed by a photographer.

Early life and education

Born in 1945, in Kőszeg, András Arató was born and raised in

Hungary Hungary is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning much of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia and ...

. He has stated that a major part of his childhood was a gargantuan chestnut tree growing in his hometown. He would reminisce about it as if it were a tree of wisdom in his town as many do of landmarks in their own lives. Not much else is currently known about Arató's teenage and pre-university years. He completed compulsory military service in the Hungarian People's Army and in 1969, Arató graduated from the Budapest University of Technology and Economics under the Faculty of Electrical Engineering.

Career

In 1996, Arató was a contestant in the Hungarian version of ''

Jeopardy! ''Jeopardy!'' is an American television game show created by Merv Griffin. The show is a quiz competition that reverses the traditional question-and-answer format of many quiz shows. Rather than being given questions, contestants are instead g ...

'' (''Mindent vagy semmit!''). After retirement, he worked as a DJ for a local radio station for five years. In 2019, he became the advertising face for

Coca-Cola Coca-Cola, or Coke, is a cola soft drink manufactured by the Coca-Cola Company. In 2013, Coke products were sold in over 200 countries and territories worldwide, with consumers drinking more than 1.8 billion company beverage servings ...

in Hungary. In 2020, Arató was a contestant in the Hungarian version of '' Masked Singer'' ('' Álarcos énekes''), as the character "Szörnyecske" ("Little Monster"), broadcast on the TV station RTL Klub. In 2025, Arató was a presenter at the Hungarian Sportspeople of the Year gala. He presented the award for "Best Community Sports Event" with canoeist Rita Kőbán.

Internet meme

While Arató was on holiday, he was taking photos of his trip, uploading them to social media. Not only his friends saw his photos but also a professional photographer, who contacted him saying that he was seeking a model and offered him an invitation to a shoot. Arató accepted the offer and the photographer took some photos, which both he and Arató liked. He was invited for more shoots and over a hundred stock photos were made. He agreed for the photos to be used for this purpose, with the exception of photos of topics about politics, religion, and sex, as he felt those topics are sensitive to many people. Arató later looked himself up on Google Images and saw photos of himself as a doctor, coming from a hospital's homepage. A few months after, he looked himself up again and discovered more photos, including one of his face pasted on all four faces of Mount Rushmore. These were the early stages of an Internet meme. The photographer who took the stock photos had asked him to smile, and many internet users perceived his smile as fake, masking sorrow, ultimately giving him the name "Hide the Pain Harold". Arató stated that during the photoshoot he became tired of smiling too much. At first, Arató was unhappy about people adding funny text to his photos, stating he was not really a "funny guy". Arató realised he did similar things while he was in school, like drawing on pictures in his course books of the Hungarian poet John Arany, making him look like a pirate. He stated that closing down a webpage would not really work, as the meme content could soon respawn, so after six years, he accepted his meme status. He hoped that everyone would forget about using his photos, but that did not happen. First, Internet users from the United States started posting photos of Arató, then the practice spread to Europe, and later on, the rest of the world. An Internet user, whose identity remains anonymous, found out Arató's true identity and emailed him, stating that there were many users who believed that he was not a real living person. At first, Arató ignored the user's request, but after getting more emails with the same request, he agreed to upload a picture of himself on his Russian fanpage, holding a sign saying "Я ЖИВ" ("YA ZHIV", Russian for "I'M ALIVE"). After a few hours, the photo had been seen by over ten thousand users as well as the international media.

Awards

In 2002, Arató won the János Urbanek Prize. The Hungarian Electrotechnical Association (MEE, short for the Hungarian ''Magyar Elektrotechnikai Egyesület'') awards the János Urbanek Prize yearly, which is given to a member who, within the framework of the Association life, has an outstanding theoretical or practical activity in the field of lighting technology. In 2010, he won the Déri Miksa Award from the MEE.

Personal life

Arató lives in

Budapest Budapest is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns of Hungary, most populous city of Hungary. It is the List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, tenth-largest city in the European Union by popul ...

with his wife Gabriella, his son and his cat "Grecko". He has a son who was born in 1973.

References

External links

* *
András Arató's Travel Blog

Hide the Pain Harold Official Webpage
* * *
VTT winners: Pollich Prize (for Lighting Society)

Gallery on Dreamstime
{{Authority control Living people 1945 births Hungarian electrical engineers Internet memes People notable for being the subject of a specific photograph Hungarian models Hungarian engineers Hungarian photographers People from Kőszeg Male models Budapest University of Technology and Economics alumni Stock photography